Subject“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Description

Bulletin insert to accompany the sermon

When the Almighty God meant to stoop so low as to be fixed in our center, he chose for his mother a holy person and a maid. She received the angel’s message with such sublimity of faith that her faith was turned to vision, her hopes into actual passion, and her grace into glory. She who was full of God, bearing God in her virgin womb and the Holy Spirit in her heart, arose with haste and gladness to communicate that joy which was designed for all the world. Let us notice how light and airy was the coming of the Virgin, as she made haste over the mountains; her very little burden which she bear hindered her not but that she might make haste enough; her spirit was cheerful and her body full of life….When we carry Christ within us, his presence is not so peevish as to disturb our health, nor so sad as to discompose our cheerfulness, but he recreates our body by charity and fills us with serenity.

Mary found no one so fit as her cousin Elisabeth to share the first emanations for her overjoyed heart, for she was to be the mother of the Baptist, who was sent as forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord her son. It is not easy to imagine what collision of joys was at this blessed meeting.